Albert Mohler: California’s Effort To Legislate Religious Liberty

The state of California, the nation’s most populous state, is often the epicenter of cultural and moral change in the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown recently vetoed Assembly Bill 569, which would have, shockingly enough, removed religious employers’ ability to make hiring and firing decisions based on their own religious code of sexual ethics.

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Fletcher of San Diego, said that it should be illegal for religious employers to discriminate or take punitive action based on “reproductive decisions.” This would include everything from abortion to sex outside of marriage, she said.

Most Americans will not know about Assembly Bill 569. They won’t understand just how close the nation’s most populous state came to an outright denial of religious liberty by making it illegal for a Christian organization, such as a Christian college or school or university, any kind of Christian ministry, to employ persons based upon very clear Christian convictions concerning sexual morality.